“Correct pronunciation was positively regarded by the Southern immigration as a mark of aristocracy or, as they called it, ‘quality.’ The ‘ing’ in ‘evening,’ or ‘morning’ or any other words, was softened into ‘in,’ the full sound being held finical and ‘stuck up.’ So it was no unusual thing to hear such a comical string of emasculated ‘nasals’ as the question of a prominent Indiana lawyer of the Kentucky persuasion, ‘Where were you a-standin’ at the time of your perceivin’ of the hearin’ of the firin’ of the pistol?’... To ‘set’ was the right way to sit; an Indian did not scalp, he ‘skelped’: a child did not long for a thing, he ‘honed’ for it,--slang retains this Hoosier archaism; a woman was not dull, she was ‘daunsy’; commonly a gun was ‘shot’ instead of fired in all moods and tenses.”[19] While the French settlements in Indiana made no appreciable impression on the common speech, yet it has been assumed by some observers that the inclination at the South to throw the accent of words forward, as in gentle_men_, settle_ment_, was fairly attributable to the influence of the French Catholics in Louisiana and of the Huguenots who were scattered through the Southeastern colonies, though this would seem a trifle finespun; but the idiosyncrasy noted exists at the South, no matter what its real origin may have been, and it has been communicated in some measure through Southern influences to the middle Western people. However, Southern Indianians sometimes say _Tennes_-sy, accenting the first syllable and slurring the last, illustrating again the danger of accepting any theories or fixing any rules for general guidance in such matters. Dr. Eggleston remembers only one French word that survived from old French times in the Wabash country,--“cordelle, to tow a boat by a rope carried along the shore.” The most striking influence in the Indiana dialect is that of the Scotch-Irish, who have left marked peculiarities of speech behind them wherever they have gone. Notwithstanding the fact that both the English Quakers and the Germans contributed largely to the settlement of Pennsylvania and of the Southeastern colonies, the idiosyncrasies of speech most perceptible in the regions deriving their population from those sources are plainly Scotch-Irish; as, for example, the linguistic deficiency which makes _strenth_ and _lenth_ of _strength_ and _length_, or _bunnle_ of _bundle_, and the use of _nor_ for _than_, after a comparative adjective. The use of _into_ for _in_ and _whenever_ for _as soon as_ are other Scotch-Irish peculiarities. These, however, are heard only in diminishing degree in Indiana, and many of the younger generations of Hoosiers have never known them. The confusion of _shall_ and _will_ and of _like_ and _as_ is traceable to North-Irish influences, and is not peculiar to the spoken language at the South and West, but is observed frequently in the newspapers, and is found even in books.